Lone Wolves
by jadeandlilac
Summary: House Stark members in other houses: Cat Lannister, Bran Tully, Arya Martell, Robb Baratheon, Rickon Greyjoy, Sansa Tyrell, Ned Arryn.


**AN - Written for asoiafkinkmeme on livejournal. The prompt was "House Stark members in other houses." Enjoy! :) **

* * *

Catelyn Lannister

On the day her father is expected, Cat climbs to the tallest tower of Casterly Rock and waits. Eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun, ears pricked, she stands poised and still. _My little Cat_, her father will say as he sweeps her up in a swirl of his crimson cloak. To one side Lannisport lies glittering in the curve of the harbor, and light dances on the jewel-colored sea. To the other, Cat looks out across rippling, gold-green fields and feels her heart race at the sight of several small figures. _Father_. She fairly flies down the tower steps and through the bustling castle - Lord Tywin's imminent arrival has galvanized its inhabitants into a frenzy of cleaning and preparations. At the foot of the carved stone staircase in the cavernous entrance hall, her mother waits with the twins on either side, both wide-eyed and resignedly clutching a hand each. Lady Joanna looks with disapproving amusement on her eldest daughter, eying the mess of curls disarranged from her race through the castle. Red gold, her father calls the color, and on her last nameday there was a handsome lion's head brooch of scarlet-tinged gold, with tiny winking sapphires for eyes. She is only permitted to wear it on special occasions, of course, but she likes the look of it nestled in the blue silk of her small jewelry case. Then Lord Tywin looms in the doorway, and Cat can hardly stand still while he kisses her mother and the tops of the twins' blond heads - he cuts an imposing figure in his golden armor and while Cersei only stares with four-year-old defiance, Jaime makes as if to hide behind his mother's skirts. Finally it is Cat's turn, and though she knows it isn't ladylike and that the septa will berate her later, she leaps into her father's arms. _How you've grown, little Cat, _he says, his voice rumbling through her. She remembers when he gave her the brooch, and though she was only nine he had spoken to her of husbands and marriages - he had promised her the dragon prince and said that she would be a queen. Fire, she'd thought, for the fire of my hair.

* * *

Bran Tully

All Tullys are at home on the water and in it, but none so much as this one. The child wakes in the morning to leap from the walls of the castle where the Tumblestone and Red Fork flow deepest, and crawls into bed at night with the fragrant smell of two rivers seeping from his skin. He swims like any other boy runs - without thinking, as though it is second nature, deep in him as anything can be. _What are you searching for?_his mother asks in desperation, hands on the slim, sun-darkened shoulders of her lastborn, but he only shrugs. She does not understand that for him, the only sought thing is the joy of movement and the comforting press of an enveloping river. She wonders how it is that he breathes so little, his small, slick head breaking the surface with surprising infrequency as she watches from the walls. He loves the cool dark that spreads below the surface, a world perpetually in motion, flowing toward the sea. He climbs easily over the large stones of the riverbanks and swings from overhanging tree limbs; small, bright fish wink at him through the muted, green dark and he winks back. His uncle the Blackfish doesn't worry - he knows that water speaks like weirwoods can, that it is only another means by which to know the gods. Once at God's Eye he watched the boy floating on his back, his slim body like a white star in the lake that was deepening to black as the day faded. His eyes were fixed on the heavens, following unseen patterns, invisible trails as of fish in a river.

* * *

Arya Martell

In the water gardens Arya sits high on Obara's shoulders and no one can defeat them. Her older sister is nearly fourteen and stronger than anyone, and Arya is tougher than she looks. They topple fierce, sinewy girls and boys three times Arya's size; they all go down screaming with a great splash and the victors are heralded by the cheers of the other children. The fun is over when Arianne comes - clad in fluttery yellow silk so that Arya says she looks like a baby chicken - to bring them in for the feast. Obara, being bigger and doing only as she likes, disappears but Arya is bathed and dressed and suffers her cousin to braid and pin her short, dark hair. She had cut it thinking that there would not be enough left for braids, which she detests, but somehow Arianne finds a way. The feast is meant to celebrate the departure of her father for King's Landing, but Arya sees no reason for rejoicing. She likes her father here, where he'll help her at her training and wrap his own silk scarf about her face before leading her on a nighttime ride through the sands. King's Landing is a city of thieves and whores - she'd heard that from Obara, but when she repeated it again later Tyene gasped and Nym shrieked with laughter, and her eldest sister denied having taught her any such thing. Arya sits in the window seat, the sinking sun glaring red as it dips toward the distant hills. Though she does not hear him enter, when she looks back her father is there, his handsome face easing into a smile when she runs to greet him. He scoops her up in his free arm, and in the other he holds a long, slim bundle. When he sits her back on the window seat, the swathe of burnt orange silk falls away to reveal a spear, light and slender and as tall as she is, with a fierce point that Oberyn Martell warns her to be wary of. "Your dancing master knows this one too, Arya child. One day soon, you will fight as well as Obara with a spear." He raises one black eyebrow and they smile identical smiles. She cannot help but add, "I'm already better with a blade." Chucking her under the chin he says, "Your mother may have been of the North, but you're a Sand Snake true enough, little love."

* * *

Robb Baratheon

In the courtyard of the Red Keep, Robb Baratheon swings the newly acquired blade in a vicious arc and feels the impact jar through him when it makes contact with his opponent's armor. The other boy reels backward, a muffled curse and a laugh bubbling from behind his helm. Robb's blade flashes in the sun, a nameday gift from his lord father - valyrian steel with smoky ripples of deepest gray spreading over its surface like clouds on a storm sky. The sword meets its brother with a ringing clash, but even true valyrian steel can't change the fact that his opponent is too eager, with too little patience. It does not take much to force the boy back until he nearly loses his balance, finally yielding, though Robb knows it pains him to do so in front of their lady mother. The queen sits at the far end of the yard, her golden hair piled atop her head, lips pursed as she watches her two older sons at their training. When Joffrey removes his helm a tumble of blond curls falls about his flushed face - he resembles their mother, while Robb's hair is as black as their father's. "Well met, brother," Robb says, extending a hand to the younger boy, who takes it grudgingly but cannot help grinning when his older brother ruffles his hair. As they lapse into the easy japing banter that is natural to them, Cersei observes her sons, so very like their respective fathers - though she does not think either one suspects the truth of it. Her firstborn has a warrior's heart and an honest simplicity that endears him to all, and her second is as sharp and clever as the lion cub Jaime had been at his age. She favors Joffrey, of course - she could never change that - but she cannot fail to note that the less admirable qualities of the younger boy fade under the influence of his beloved brother, and for that she must always be grateful. She marvels every day that they have come to love one another so well, as their fathers never will.

* * *

Rickon Greyjoy

He is the fiercest child Alannys Greyjoy has ever known. At nine he dances the finger dance, calm and unflinching as he watches the blade flash a hair's breadth from the small, splayed hand that reaches to snatch it from the air. At ten, his mother gives in to his pleas and brings him along on a raiding party - "Nothing he won't see soon enough," she says, brushing away Alannys' concern with the shrug of a bony shoulder. The boy is very like her. He was born in the pitching cabin of a longship in Ironman's Bay - but at least, his mother has always said, he had sense enough to wait until after the raiding was done. He came weeks before his time and children that size do not live long, especially not when born to Ironmen. But he has no father to speak of, and his mother has always been a kind of anomaly. After his birth she stole a fisherman's wife from Lannisport to care for him, keeping the woman as other men keep salt wives, and no one dared comment. She remembers the weight of her son laid on her chest, the flash of a knife in the guttering lamplight that cut the cord. The smell of his blood - her own blood - so very like the smell of the sea. He had howled all night, whether to show his displeasure or simply a voracious will to live she did not know, and when at dawn they reached Pyke, mother and child bathed in the biting waves. There was no holy man to bless her son with sea and salt and steel, so Asha Greyjoy did it herself; he only screamed louder, and this was how she knew he would live. She thought then as she does now - as her ten-year-old son slips a golden chain from about the neck of a dead man - _my boy. My sweet babe._

* * *

Sansa Tyrell

The trees along the river are full of tiny lanterns, gold and green and softest pink amidst the fullness of leaves. Their reflections skip lightly on the river, scattering like fireflies in the wake of the carved boat that glides easily through the perfumed evening. Sansa is nestled between sister and cousin, the three of them plucking cherries from a basket of woven sweet grass and flicking the stems and pits into the dark water in a way that Sansa's mother would find most unbecoming of young ladies. To the stern, a singer strokes his harp and on the banks Sansa hears the almost musical laughter of her father's guests as they wander the many garden paths with cups of honeyed wine in hand. When the last strains of _The Maids That Bloom in Spring_give way to the gentle lapping of oars, Margaery says, "Pray singer, give us a song of the frozen North." On nights when the windows stand open to the still summer air and even the creamy marble of Highgarden's open galleries is uncomfortably warm underfoot, Sansa and her sister – and sometimes their brother, too – whisper tales of snow and winter winds, of things that lurk beyond the Wall and the brave men in black who do battle with them. The stories make them shiver, if not with the cold they long for, at least with a touch of fear. On those nights Sansa dreams herself clad in lustrous fur with blue winter roses in her hair, riding out into a snow-softened forest thick with old magic.

* * *

Ned Arryn

Robert takes the throne and, on Lord Arryn's advice, chooses the younger Lannister girl as his queen. Ned knows that his father hopes Cersei Lannister's utter lack of any resemblance to Lyanna will help Robert to forget, but Ned isn't sure his friend ever will. Lord Arryn rides for King's Landing, where he will serve as hand, and Ned is left to play Lord of the Eyrie, to hide, as Robert says only half mockingly, behind high mountains and high walls – _as high as honor_. Ned fails to see how his path is the easy one, looking after the myriad broken families of the Vale whose fathers and husbands and sons are dead, and whose lord has left them in favor of the man who asked for their lives. Ned is not even the heir they expected, but Brandon is dead and there must always be a protector of the Vale. And, his father reminds him, there must always be an heir. He may not be the one they would have preferred, but Ned is nothing if not a dutiful son and an honorable man. He agrees to take the older Lannister girl to wife – she has the Lannister look but hair of a golden red that he stares at too long, blushing when she notices. When her time comes to birth their first child Ned cannot help but fear what may happen – he remembers his own mother, and most of all he remembers Lyanna. But when Cat places the squalling babe in his arms and gives him a tired smile, eyes half shut so that she reminds him of a sleeping lioness, he feels relief overwhelm him. He kisses his first son, kisses Cat's red hair, and leaves the birthing room for the peace of his father's solar – his solar, now. Outside the high windows the sky stretches, deepening blue above the almost-black of the mountains, and he can just make out the silvery glint of the fall far across the valley. The beauty of his home will never be lost on him, and he only regrets that Lyanna's boy will not grow to manhood in this place, the homeland that should have been his. Ned lifts a letter from the table and traces the broken seal with one finger – the gray direwolf of House Stark. At least the boy is safe there, far to the North where no one would think to look, a Stark in name so they would not know him if they did. _His life will not unfold here_, Ned thinks, _but at least he will live_.


End file.
